Mentor textsWriting workshopGrades 3–5
Help your students read like writers
— and actually want to write.
Original mentor texts and ready-to-teach writing workshops for grades 3–5. Written by a teacher, built to pick up and teach tomorrow.
Start with the free An Unlikely Hero pack
Tom is an ordinary boy who dreams of being an explorer — until a portal, a jungle, and a moment when he learns that courage, not strength, is what makes a hero.
One original adventure story, plus everything you need to teach from it:
- An Unlikely Hero — the full mentor text
- Lesson 1 — Read Like a Writer (slides + student copy)
- Lesson 2 — Show, Don’t Tell (slides + reference sheet)
- Lesson 3 — Build a Suspense Scene (slides + story planner)
- Support resource — extra reading and writing activities
- Walkthrough videos on my YouTube channel
Notice → Effect → Try it
Every lesson follows the same three steps:
Notice
Notice what the author did — the word, the pause, the detail.
Effect
Name the effect it had on you as a reader.
Try it
Try it in your own writing.
That’s where writing actually improves.
Not from a list of rules, but from a reader who has seen the move done and wants to try it themselves.
Written by a teacher, not bolted together
I’ve spent more than twenty years in primary and secondary classrooms. I write the mentor texts myself and build the lessons around them, so the story and the teaching fit together instead of one being added on afterwards. Every resource is differentiated, because the range in a real classroom is wider than one worksheet allows for — and I write for the reluctant writers too.
Anastasia, Writing Workshop Library